Saturday, November 01, 2008

Flooding in Hanoi

It's raining in Hanoi - and not like the normal monsoon rain, with heavy rain for a couple of hours - this has been almost 36 hours of heavy rain!

Yesterday after a meeting I went out and tried to cross the road - it was around noon and the water was knee high. I caught a taxi and as I passed through the narrow streets I watched people barricade their shops as the the taxi "sailed" by. Some waved at me, I guess finding it funny that the taxi was acting as a boat - others stood stunned and anxious obviously afraid if barricades wouldn't hold.

This morning I read the rain fall has been the heaviest in Hanoi for 2 decades. Friday 300mm of rain fell. The news paper showed pictures of people wading through breast-high water trying to save their moto. And apparantly several people have died in the floods.

It's still raining and the weather forecast predicts heavy rain for the next couple of days.

It's raining in Hanoi.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Kathrine,

I remember the rain in the south VN is like Hanoi now. It rains non stop for 1 or 2 days and this makes the snake and frogs jump out of the hole and swim on water.

Hope it stops raining soon and the sun comes out to clear the dark cloud with blue sky for you so you can go around taking pictures and enjoy the time there before you go away. I heard Hanoi doesn't have many sunny days so it's like the UK.

Well, if it continues raining on and on and you stuck in the hotel,
it'd entertain you to pass the time and watch a couple minutes of videos of a sunny day on a white beach in the south and a piece of a clear day in Halong bay accompanies soothing music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQJTWSlkZ34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLthowpecak

Ben